Sunday, January 06, 2008

Liquid pencil

I read about a newish product today (it was available summer 2007) and am intrigued with it and would love to try it. Liquid Pencil. this is produced by an Australian company - Matisse Derivan.

The video above shows Sue Raccanello using the product in a drawing/painting.

Matisse Derivan describes the Liquid Pencil properties:

Derivan Liquid Pencil is an innovative new product that allows you to create authentic graphite pencil effects and pencil sketches using a liquid. It has been formulated to be easily thinned with water or MM9 Acrylic Painting Medium (to maintain permanency) and allow for the softest of colours to be applied with a brush, nib, or other art tools. With a consistency of cream, and a different rheology, artists now have a wider scope for creating sketches.

Derivan Liquid Pencil is available in six graphite shades each with a permanent or rewettable formula.

Due to a precisely balanced formulation another great benefit of the Permanent liquid pencil is that it will “burnish up’ in a similar manner to traditional graphite but it will not smudge.

The rewettable formula will also allow you to remove areas using water – in a similar manner to watercolour techniques, or it is possible to use with a traditional eraser. Another advantage to using Derivan Liquid Pencil is that large areas can be built up and covered quickly and easily.

Each of the shades have a definite graphite colour, however, there are distinct undertones such as blue, yellow red, sepia and neutral in two different strengths to allow a great range of options for artists.

Free samples of the product were being distributed worldwide, but the offer has now ended, as I presume there was high demand, as there often is when samples are provided. I wonder what the success rate of samples are in terms of buyers of the final product. I'm sure that there are lots of 'freebie' seekers with kitchen drawers full of samples that are never used.

You can view the colour chart for the liquid pencil here.

I have emailed Matisse Derivan to ask if there is a Canadian distributer or if I can buy directly from the factory there. According to their website, it seems there are only Australian distributors so far.

If anyone knows any North American distributors of this product, please let me know.

3 comments:

"JeanneG" said...

http://google.jerrysartarama.com/search?search=DERIVAN+LIQUID+PENCIL+&site=jerrys&client

Try here Jeanette.

Bonny said...

As far as I have been able to see, Jerry's Artarama is the only US distributer so far. I went in to my local art store here in Victoria (BC), and they said they would look for the product at the next art sales convention. There is hope we'll get it, too.

Jeanette Jobson said...

Great, thanks, I'll check into that. I was hoping there would be a Canadian distributor. I'll have to ask my local art store to look into it too.